


One Step Behind

by HundredSunsets



Category: The Unforgiving, The Unforgiving comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5299418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HundredSunsets/pseuds/HundredSunsets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susie could never have known that her mother was always just around the corner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step Behind

  **Dublin, 1967**

She stood by the grave, clutching Granny's hand, listening to the vicar drone on. Thunder and lightning and more thunder and the taunting voice of Billy Fitzpatrick, the acknowledged bully of her class, going round and round and round in her head.

_Your mam's gone to Hell. Everyone says so. My dad says even if she wasn't a murderer she'd be going downstairs because she had the Devil in her ear telling her to take drugs and steal and you'll go to Hell too because she wasn't even married when you were born and that's a sin, that is._

Susie had been suspended from school. Not because of Billy. Because she'd overheard her teacher whispering to the caretaker about Mam and Granny and Grandad. _I knew the Harkins when Sinéad was Susie's age. Hard to believe she could be their daughter. Still, I suppose there's a bad apple in every box._ Susie had marched right up to the teacher and bitten her arm, hard enough to draw blood. She wasn't sorry for it. Only... could Billy and Mrs Waters be right? Mam had killed Grandad. She'd watched her do it. They'd been arguing about something and Susie had been watching from the stairs when Grandad yelled at Mam to get out and Mam and lifted a gun and shot him. She'd heard the ear-splitting bang, seen him fall, known that she had not imagined it, it wasn't a game, Mam had pulled the trigger. And yet she had the strangest feeling her mother hadn't meant to do it. But how could that be? If she hadn't meant to, how could it have happened? And wouldn't she have stayed, have helped, not disappeared into the night, never to be seen or heard from again until two weeks ago, when Granny had been called down to West Cork to help identify a body.

_What's that mean, Granny?_

_I don't know, sweetie. Nothing, I hope. Be good for Janet while I'm gone, okay?_

And then, Granny's return the next evening, when she stood on next-door's step looking like she'd just woken up from a nightmare.

_How was eye-denny-flying the body, Gran?_

_Mary? You look like you could do with a strong cup of tea. Why don't you come in?_

_No, no thanks Janet. I'm sorry, I need to take Susan home right now. I'll- I'll tell you later..._

Being sat down on the couch in the same room where Grandad died, Granny kneeling in front of her, hands on her shoulders.

_Susie, I've got something to tell you about your mother. You must listen and you must be very brave._

_Did the police catch her?_

_No. I mean- well, not exactly. I'm... I'm afraid she's died, love._

The endless silence, kicking her heels against the couch, not being told off about it for once.

_She went to visit her friend. You remember Auntie Opal, don't you?_

_Who lives with that nasty man who said mean things to her?_

_Yes. He's died too. Sinéad, she- she killed him trying to protect Opal. But he... Killed her at the same time._

More quiet. Looking at her feet. Her shoes, black and polished, had somehow lost their shine since yesterday.

_Granny?_

_Yes?_

_Is that why she killed Grandad? To protect me?_

_What? No! Oh, sweetheart, no, you mustn't ever think that. Your grandad was a good man. What happened to him was a terrible... mistake. Your mother wasn't thinking straight. It's very sad, but they're both in a better place now._

_But..._

_What is it, Susie? Come on, you can ask._

_Granny, how come she could see Auntie Opal but not me?_

For that, her grandmother had no answer at all. So here they were, hand in hand by the hole her mam would not be buried in. The coffin was empty. Her body had disappeared. There had been dark whispers all up and down the street when the news broke. There had been people gossiping all throughout the funeral at the back of the church. There were murmurs even now, at the graveside. The Devil had come for his own and whisked her away.

Susie and the rest of the funeral-goers never saw the woman standing on the far side of the cemetery, watching the ceremony with an unreadable face and hollow eyes, and may not have recognised her if they had. Her hair was longer than when Susie had last seen her, the clothes clean, the nails unbitten. But her eyes were still a blue that matched her daughter's, the hair the same vibrant shade of red, the skin pale and freckled. In one hand, she was tightly clutching a scrap of green blanket that Susie had no memory of being wrapped in as a baby. Not one person saw the woman scrunch her eyes shut and drop the scrap, then turn and walk away. And if anyone claimed to have seen her walk through the wall and vanish into nothing, they would be told the rain was playing tricks on their eyes.

 

**From the school report of Susan Harkin, 1974**

'Susan is a bright girl, but she must make more of an effort with her fellow pupils, her teachers and her work. She is perfectly aware that smoking in the school building is strictly prohibited, as is swearing at members of staff. Several of her detentions have been for homework that has clearly not even been looked at, never mind completed, and while the incident involving William Fitzpatrick has been looked into and Susan reprimanded, she must understand that violent behaviour, particularly when carried out to such a disturbing extent, will not be tolerated...'

 

**Dublin, 1977**

_Who cares about them? Screw them. None of them matter. Screw them all!_

Gran hadn't been impressed, but Susie knew she was on the brink of expulsion anyway, so why not quit school? Why not get a job? She'd already one-upped her mother by not being pregnant at seventeen. She was hardly 'making a mess of her life' like Gran had warned her nearly every day the last three years, or 'heading down Sinéad's road' as that nosy cow Janet had muttered. How could she be, anyway? She wasn't going to university, for one thing, and she wasn't going to fail to get her degree because she was too busy getting high. Where did Janet get off on sticking her weirdly tiny nose in, anyway? Old witch. It was none of her business. None of Gran's either. They could both go and get hit by bus. Then they could fuck off and lecture her mother in Hell.

She wasn't to know that if they wanted to lecture Sinéad, all they had to do was stand in the living room of number 32 in the middle of the night, where they'd be sure to find her holding an old family photo in both hands, smiling sadly, hardly noticing her own tears hitting the cracked glass frame.

 

**London, 1999**

This city was the absolute pits. Worse than Dublin, even. Not a night went by without the wail of police sirens jolting Susie awake at some unearthly hour of the morning. She would do it. She would take that job in New York. It was so very distant, but it hardly mattered. She had no living family. She'd heard on the grapevine that Gran had had a sudden stroke twelve years ago and hadn't been entirely shocked to discover this didn't upset her at all. New York it was, then. Goodbye, Gran. Goodbye, crappy flat with the broken window and the tyrannical landlord.

She wondered if it also meant goodbye to the increasingly dim memories of her mother and it occurred to her then that she was more than a decade older than Sinéad had ever been. She wondered momentarily if thirty nine was too old to have children before deciding it didn't matter anyway. She would never have kids for fear of falling into Sinéad's style of mothering- in other words, not mothering at all. It would be cruel to subject an innocent child to anything close to Susie's formative years. What did a mother even do? For Susie, there was no way of knowing.

And for Mary Harkin, far, far away, there was no way of knowing that her granddaughter had never come to pay her last respects, just as there was no way of knowing that her daughter had.

 

**From _Paranormal Bimonthly_ , 2008 **

'The ghost, described as being female, red-haired and carrying a gun, was allegedly seen walking the streets of New York before suddenly disappearing, much like the spectre reported to be haunting certain parts of London in the late 90s...'

 

**New York, 2009**

She felt sorry for that Janyce Beecham down the street. Divorced, one daughter a victim of that nasty-piece-of-work serial killer who was on the loose, the other daughter and the son in the custody of the ex-husband. It took a cruel person, Susie believed, to keep someone's children from them when they'd been through something like that. She'd met Tom just the once and her immediate thought had been _those poor kids._

Janyce was a homicide detective, apparently, which seemed ironic, but each to their own, as Gran had always said. It was one of the few things Gran said that Susie had bothered to hold onto and it was hardly an original phrase. She wondered if her mother would ever have told her anything useful, but she doubted it.

Reflecting on Janyce, it was nice to have a neighbour she got on with, but Susie suspected she didn't know her well enough to pry into why she'd got out of her car in a daze last night, walked the wrong way up the road and tried to open Susie's front door instead of her own, taking several minutes to realise that the key was made for a different lock. There was a something strange in her eyes, wide and confused, as she shuffled off to her own house.

Anyone would think she'd seen a ghost.

 

**New York, 2009**

There was a strange pull, a tugging in her heart, like something vital had suddenly been wrenched away, torn apart. It was like feeling someone die. Maya from work had described a similar sensation when her mother died. Well, that couldn't be it, could it? A bit late, if that was the case.

Susie heard her neighbour had been murdered on the news later that evening, just days after the front door incident. Hell. Janyce of all people didn't deserve that. But seeing her face on the television... Had her hair been longer, she would almost have looked like Sinéad. But Sinéad was long dead. Unlike Janyce, her body had never been found.

' _And now, back to our main story of the night. The mutilated remains of three children and a young woman were discovered on a New York street this afternoon. While the children's bodies are damaged beyond recognition, the woman, although officially a Jane Doe, is said to bear startling similarities to-_ '

Susie switched off the television and never thought any more of it.

 

**From a news report featured on the _Seven O' Clock News_ , Thursday 17th September 2009**

'...the woman, although officially a Jane Doe, is said to bear startling similarities to Sinéad Harkin, an Irish murder victim whose body famously vanished in 1967, despite having only been dead a few hours. Police are refusing to comment on this, but a statement has been issued saying that anyone who may have known Ms Harkin is urged to come forward. So far, this call has gone unanswered.'


End file.
